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As far as I'm aware we largely control floods using dams and reservoirs and those systems work extraordinarily well. Wetlands are awesome, there are a source of biodiversity and should be preserved.
However, we have way more effective ways to prevent floods. Wetlands cannot beat human construction in terms of protecting lives from flooding.
This is something I know a fair bit about. If you don't build in areas susceptible to flooding in the first place (including but not limited to wetlands), you don't need to engineer around nature. And it turns out that our engineering design floods are not keeping up with real floods, so all that engineering is not really helping.
Plus, engineered structures need regular maintenance and we are generally not all that great at infrastructure maintenance. See the Libya damn disaster for just the mort recent example.
If you don’t build in areas susceptible to flooding in the first place
It was access to one of your most incredible natural resources and methods of transportation, and that's simply a non starter. Water is know if not the most critical resource we have accessible to us. People congregate near it for very good reason, and that's never going to change.
Plus, engineered structures need regular maintenance
Yes, and those resources are absolutely critical again, for both maintenance during floods and for making sure people have water through droughts. They will never go away and they will always be required.
Which one's more sustainable and budget friendly?
Both.
Wetlands aren't built to protect human life, they will still enable floods to happen regularly. You can build human infrastructure up to the point that a flood is either impossible or next to impossible.
Also dams and other water maintenance infrastructure is critical to ensuring that we don't run out of water in times of drought which is going to be more and more and more important as time goes on especially in the west as global warming dries it up
But at the end of the day weekends biodiversity is important, the fact that they act as carbon sinks is important, and they should still be preserved.
We can't beat nature on this one. All our attempts to prevent flooding are expensive and just move the issue elsewhere. Working with nature is the way to go.
We have literally beat nature on this one. Basically every advanced society's first step into being an advanced society is building up a network of dams and reservoirs that control their rivers.
This is not some hideous expensive failed project, this is one of the most successful enterprises that every society in the course of humankind has done.
This is like saying that farming is a failure.
Dams can fail. Just look at Libia right now. And I know not every country is Libia, but pretty much all dams in the US are fucked too and nothing is being done about it. This is all very expensive infrastructure that needs constant upkeep and investment and is disastrous if that for some reason isn't being done. Here in the Netherlands, there has been a massive project the past like 20 years to 'give rivers space' with wetlands and floodplains. It works well. I mean, we are literally the best in the world in managing water. 2 years ago a couple of rivers flooded. The city I lived in was already done with their part of the project. The floodplains flooded and everyone was safe, but another city which wasn't done yet flooded and some cities in Germany and Belgium did too.
Wetlands managed by beaver dams do this stuff but also recharge aquifers, promote formation of peat lands holding carbon under water and eventually in the soil, change local climate increasing rainfall and sustain forests and ecosystems that have further effects to enrich soil and keep areas livable for many centuries and millennia. This form of land management fights back desertification leaving lands better than they were and prevents land subsidence in coastal estuaries. Draining swamps with systems of canals, levees and dams for human habitation and exploitation, degrades soil, aquifers and biodiversity leading to deforestation, desertification, and places like the Louisiana estuary being slowly lost to the sea in the span of just generations.
Wetlands and floodplains are very important to mitigating floods, soil retention, and mass filtering. We haven't beaten nature and are spending significant sums of money to revitalize and protect these areas because we have realized that they are just better than what we do.